The 25-year-old Long Beach resident, who doesn’t drive, has coaxed friends into chasing Nom Nom to Santa Anita Park or a Torrance shopping center so she can wait in line – often for hours – for the food truck’s signature Vietnamese sandwiches.

“I love their sandwiches. They’re so good, especially the lemongrass banh mi,” said Rodriguez, who waited almost two hours in a Signal Hill Best Buy parking lot Wednesday night to be Nom Nom’s first customer.

“I’ve had different sandwiches, especially Vietnamese sandwiches, but these ones are really, really tasty,” said Rodriguez, who planned to buy about a half-dozen sandwiches and tacos for herself and friends.

The food truck fervor that has spread nationally and throughout Southern California has made its way to Greater Long Beach, landing en masse in parking lots and along storefronts in Signal Hill, Long Beach and Los Alamitos.

Each Wednesday for the past month, a section of the Best Buy parking lot in Signal Hill becomes the “Sig Alert,” a makeshift food court of 10 trucks. In Long Beach, about five gourmet trucks set up shop for lunch weekly in the Zaferia- South Design District as part of the area’s Lunch Truck It event. One of the trucks there, Vizzi Truck, offered foie gras `PB&J,’ a sandwich built with brioche toast, almond butter and truffled fig jelly for $21.

In Signal Hill, more than 300 people flooded the lot Wednesday for various eats ranging from Guinness chip ice cream sandwiches at Coolhaus to cheese and potato filled bacon shells – dubbed “the baco” – at Lardon.

“This is gourmet food that you would find at a nice restaurant, but it’s brought to you at an affordable price in a fun way,” said Long Beach resident Wendy Watson, a co-founder of Got Foodtrucks?, a group of self-described foodies who corral about a dozen food trucks a few times a week at various locations, including the weekly food event in Signal Hill.

The group has built an impressive list of more than 200 food trucks registered in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, many of them clamoring for a spot in Got Foodtrucks’ lineup.

“We went door to door, passing out fliers, eating lots of food and gaining lots of weight,” Watson said.

They started the “Sig Alert” four weeks ago at the encouragement of Best Buy Mobile Manager Jennifer Jones.

Jones said the event has drawn a regional audience of people who don’t want to travel far for the food trucks.

“We get people who say, `I don’t normally shop at this Best Buy, but now I will,”‘ she said. “It’s like a one-stop shop. You get some food and then go to Best Buy to see what they have on sale. It definitely helps out.”

And for residents accustomed to journeying 30 miles in search of gourmet food trucks, these weekly mobile food courts offer often experimental cuisine without the gasoline expense or the L.A. traffic.

“We used to go to the food trucks in L.A. during the Art Walk L.A. every month and we kind of got addicted to them,” said Long Beach resident Andrew Thomas, munching on a bacon Philly cheesesteak sandwich from Lee’s Sandwiches, one of the trucks chosen to be in Wednesday’s lot. “When we found out they were here, we stopped by.”

Food trucks have long been a roving fixture in L.A. County, feeding the working class at construction sites and commissaries. King Taco’s Raul Martinez started his business as a food truck in 1974, converting an ice cream truck into one that sold tacos.

But the gourmet food truck trend took off in 2008, when Roy Choi began peddling his Kogi Korean barbecue tacos and using social media tool Twitter to alert followers where the truck would be serving.

What has erupted is a proliferation of food trucks – many trotting out slick, graphic trucks and exotic eats. They’ve been so prevalent that cities such as Long Beach and Los Angeles are re-examining their regulations for food trucks.

Libby Gustin, an assistant professor of hospitality food service and hotel management at Cal State Long Beach, says the combination of social media and the economic downturn have led to the proliferation.

“(Operating a food truck) cuts a lot of overhead,” Gustin said. “It’s much more feasible and affordable in the economy we’re operating in, to be able to provide the food service. On the customer side, there’s a phenomenon happening with social media. Customers are following their favorite trucks on Twitter. That’s driving it.”

Long Beach residents Roxana Javadi and Nikole Markarian, whose Fresh Fries truck serves concoctions such as goat cheese-raspberry fries, said starting out as a food truck a year ago was a necessary step.

“We looked around (for a storefront), but the rents were crazy ridiculous,” said Javadi. “I think it would have been harder to get so many followers. The Twitter thing – that’s really helped us a lot. And we’ve gotten so many fans on Facebook.”

But the growing army of food trucks has concerned some restaurateurs and business supporters who fear that the gourmet carpetbaggers take away from brick-and-mortar eateries already feeling the economic pinch and fighting off closure.

Watson said they don’t want to harm storefront restaurants.

“We really support the brick-and- mortars. We do,” she said. “As you can see we wouldn’t put a mobile food court anywhere near a restaurant. We wouldn’t be disrespectful like that. We’re just trying to bring a subcommunity to the larger community who want to sell their good food to good people.”

It’s a trend that won’t go away anytime soon, Gustin said.

“It’s a much more affordable way to get your food concept out there,” she said. “I don’t think that it’ll stop when the economy recovers because it’s caught on as a trend and a phenomenon.”

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